Stay Connected

Press Center

ZonaBLADE chooses QuarkXPress 9 to create its digital magazine

The first and only interactive magazine for the iPad about video games in Spain chooses QuarkXPress 9.1 and App Studio for its flexible, efficient, affordable and stylish features.

Paris, France - 11/29/2011 -

Quark announced today that zonaBLADE chose QuarkXPress® 9.1 and App Studio™ to publish zonaBLADE EVO thefirst and only interactive magazine for the iPad about video games in Spain.

zonaBLADE is a digital media company based in Barcelona. Founded two years ago, in December 2009, when the makers of Blade FM - a popular Spanish podcast that's now in its 7th season – decided to create a website to host the program and cover the latest news on the video games industry. During this time, explained José Manuel Artés, creator and director of zonaBLADE EVO,“We have built a very healthy and committed community around zonaBLADE.com (http://zonaBLADE.com/) and, besides the on-going successof the podcast, we now want to explore new ground by being the first newscompany to embrace all digital media platforms: the web, podcasts, and now TV and interactive magazines. In fact, zonaBLADE EVO (formerly known as BLADEMagazine) is the first and only interactive magazine for iPad about video games in Spain.”

zonaBLADE launched their first two free issues in May and June 2011, but decided to change their technology provider for future issues.“The past few months have seen us re-designing much of the magazine, visualsand functionality a like, so this new issue will be the first issue of our second season,” said Artés.

Quark: Key forentering the iPad publishing market

The original layout software for the two first issues of zonaBLADE was Adobe InDesign but the company decided to switch to QuarkXPressfor the latest issue. Many reasons drove the team's decision, but Quark's pricing model was key. “We believe that the final pricing model that Adobe chose is neither realistic for the current interactive magazine market, nor suitable for small and mid-sized companies like ours. And with the fundamental decision to move to QuarkXPress came some other benefits. We really like to be able to choose which hosting service provider to use at any moment because it allows us to adjust the budget we dedicate to hosting as the number of downloaded issues increases.”

Regarding the App Studio pricing model, Artés added,“Quark's pricing, budget-wise, made more sense to us. We like the fact that Quark only charges one fixed amount per issue because we feel that working with a commission rate model, especially when Apple is already charging a commission per issue downloaded, will make it even more difficult for us to plan expense sand forecast earnings.”

Flexible, stylishand HMTL-friendly

zonaBLADE EVO is a video games outlet and, thus, their readers are keen on interactivity, professional design, and layout. zonaBLADE considered QuarkXPress 9.1 and App Studio to be the best tools to meet these requirements and surpass them.

“I think Quark's technology will allow us to achieve more professional, clean-looking publications than if we used Adobe's. With Adobe we felt the reading experience of the final issue was a little bit clunky and it didn't feel very well optimised. I also like the fact that Quark automated all those essential (but annoying) features such as adding up/down arrows to scrollable text and pages, and the way we can generate media galleries that look fantastic. And finally, I like the HTML integration and the way you can add pretty much any local or online HTML content to amagazine and make it work seamlessly.”

And to those who believe creating content for tablets is a big draw on time and money, the director of zonaBLADE EVO would add, “Creating an interactive magazine is a little more time consuming than creating a static one, but not much more. Once you learn how the software works, you can add interactivity to your issue very easily and, even considering this is brand new technology, I'd say you need 15-30 percent more time than you would need to create a regular, static publication, depending on the number of interactive elements you're adding to the issue.”

About zonaBLADE
Founded in Barcelona, in 2009, zonaBLADE’s mission has been to offer fresh insights into the video games world with an informed, unbiased and independent point of view. In just two years zonaBLADE’s website and podcast have grown a very committed and loyal audience, and it boasts a large active community - one that’s much bigger than other video games communities. As well as having a TV show in the pipeline, zonaBLADE is expanding into new media and is exploring the future of digital publications through its new, pioneering iPad magazine (available via Apple’s Newsstand).

About Quark

Founded in Denver in 1981, Quark's vision was to create software that would lay the foundation for modern publishing. For 30 years, Quark has delivered on that promise. Quark's dynamic publishing solutions are setting new standards in automated cross-media publishing by combining the power of XML with flexible layout and design to automate the delivery of customised, intelligent communications across print, the Web, and digital media.

# # #

Quark, QuarkXPress, App Studio, and the Quark logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quark Software Inc. and its affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.